Sky & Telescope

A walk at sunset instilled Norwegian artist Ed- vard Munch with strong emotions when the sky turned blood red. He put his feelings to can- vas many times, the most famous version in 1893 with The Scream, now one of the world’s most widely recognized works of art.The painting’s background includes ships in the harbor and the skyline of Christiania (now Oslo) — clues that helped the authors determine when and where Munch became filled with anxiety. Courtesy National Gallery, Oslo. All works by Munch that appear in this article are © 2004 The Munch Museum/The Munch-Ellingsen Group/Artists Rights Society, New York. WHEN THE SKYRAN RED The Story Behind The Scream By Donald W. Olson, Russell L. Doescher, and Marilynn S. Olson The background of Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream piqued the interest of our intrepid astronomically-oriented historical sleuths. This iconic work of art has a rich history, and a sky-based explanation. nly a few artworks can be considered icons hung above the blue-black fjord and the city. My friends went of popular culture. Everyone knows the enigmatic on, and I stood alone, trembling with anxiety. I felt a great, smile of the Mona Lisa, the farm couple with a unending scream piercing through nature. pitchfork in American Gothic, and the pose of the OThinker. Among these iconic works, The Scream, by Norwegian Munch never forgot that sky, and during his lifetime he wrote artist Edvard Munch (1863–1944), has uniquely become the many accounts of this memorable evening. Another version symbol of anxiety in our modern age. gives more details about the location and the remarkable colors: The Scream is of special interest to skygazers because the One evening I was walking out along a mountain road near lurid sky in the painting is the catalyst of the figure’s anxiety. Christiania [now Oslo] — together with two companions . the Munch’s own journals (portions of which we translated from Sun went down . it was as if a flaming sword of blood slashed Norwegian) make it clear that the spectacular twilight in The open the vault of heaven — the atmosphere turned to blood — Scream was inspired by an actual event: with glaring tongues of fire — the hills became deep blue — I was walking along the road with two friends — then the Sun the fjord shaded into cold blue — among the yellow and red set — all at once the sky became blood red — and I felt over- colors — that garish blood-red — on the road — and the railing come with melancholy. I stood still and leaned against the — my companions’ faces became yellow-white — I felt some- railing, dead tired — clouds like blood and tongues of fire thing like a great scream — and truly I heard a great scream. Sky & Telescope February 2004 29 THIELSKA GALLERIET, STOCKHOLM PHOTO © MUNCH MUSEUM (ANDERSEN / DE JONG), OSLO Munch painted other works that were variations of the scene of The Scream. In 1892 he created Despair (left), followed a year later by another version with a hatless figure, and later by Anxiety (right). Munch painted the most famous version of The Scream in peculiarity of northern Europe, and were frequently painted 1893 as part of The Frieze of Life,a group of works derived by artists from the north” and agrees that the event occurred from his personal experiences. Between 1892 and 1896 he cre- “probably in 1891” during “late autumn.” ated multiple variations of the scene with the titles Despair, At the other extreme, Thomas M. Messer argues in his 1973 The Scream, and Anxiety.In each painting the same spectacu- study of Munch that “nothing external gives a clue to the hor- lar twilight sky appears, with figures on a road, a prominent ror that impels the outcry” and observes that the “bandlike railing, a peninsula extending into the fjord, and a few build- arrangements that lend intensity and swirling motion to the ings representing Norway’s capital city of Christiania. These composition as a whole have often been identified as visualiza- details gave us hope that we might be able to answer specific tions of sound waves” but alternately could be “externaliza- questions: Can this precise location be found? Toward which tions of force and energy.” compass direction is the view shown in The Scream? When did These explanations didn’t seem adequate to us. Messer Munch and his two friends walk along the road? What did seems to imply that Munch’s experience was entirely internal Munch see in the sky? and psychological, yet Munch’s written accounts say that a blood-red sky preceded his melancholy and triggered the What Year and Season? scream. Moreover, Munch attached great importance to this In his 1972 monograph entirely devoted to The Scream,Rein- unusually spectacular twilight, but the sunsets as described by hold Heller states that unusually colorful sunsets are “visible in Heller would occur fairly often, perhaps every autumn. Oslo ...in the late months of autumn....As the sun then We began by searching astronomical and meteorological sets, it shines onto the clouds . and transforms them into records from the period just prior to January 22, 1892, looking stripes and tongues of intense reds and (without success) for the impressive yellows in the blue sky. The phenome- event that could have so dramatically non is an extremely impressive one, as In each painting the same affected Munch. But as we learned more unforgettable as it is indescribable.” about Munch, we realized that the orig- Aware that one of Munch’s prose ac- spectacular twilight sky inal experience with the twilight sky counts about the red sky was written on could have been much earlier. In fact, January 22, 1892, Heller judged that the appears, with figures on a road, many paintings created in the 1890s for original experience occurred shortly be- a prominent railing, a peninsula The Frieze of Life were inspired by fore, in the fall of 1891. events from years before, as recorded in A recent BBC documentary about The extending into the fjord, and a his diaries and notebooks. For example, Scream adopts the same explanation. A Munch’s beloved sister Sophie died in companion book to the program, The few buildings representing 1877. The artist depicted this tragic Private Life of a Masterpiece,by Monica scene in a series of works titled Death in Bohm-Duchen (2001), notes that “red Norway’s capital city of Christiania. the Sickroom in 1893 — fully 16 years and yellow wave-like clouds are a climatic afterward. We wondered whether this 30 February 2004 Sky & Telescope pattern of an autobiographical event painted much later held true for The Scream.We found support for this idea in a book by Arne Eggum, former chief curator of the Munch Museum, who disagrees with Heller and prefers the summer of 1886 as the probable date for Munch’s walk along the mountain road (Livsfrisen Fra Maleri Til Grafikk, 1990). There is other evidence suggesting that the Scream event occurred considerably earlier. During a stay in Nice in the winter of 1891–92, Munch discussed art with his friend Christian Skredsvig, who wrote: For a long time he had wanted to paint the memory of a sunset. Red as blood. No, it was coagulated blood. But no one else would perceive it the same way he did. They would think only about clouds. He talked himself sick of this sight that had gripped him with terror. With sadness, because the paltry re- sources of painting were not adequate. “He is striving after the impossible and has despair as his religion,” I thought, but I ad- vised him to paint it — and so he painted his remarkable “Scream.” In recalling his time spent in Nice, Munch himself explicitly mentioned the years of the original inspirations for three of the paintings in The Frieze of Life: ...the first Scream ...Kiss ...Melancholy....For these a number of rough sketches had already — in 1885–89 — been done in that I had written texts for them — more correctly said, these are illustrations of some memoirs from 1884.... The Bohemian Days of the 1880s Munch helped to date the origin of The Scream in another way in a letter to his friend Jens Thiis: “You don’t have to go so far in order to explain the genesis of The Frieze of Life — its explanation lies in the bohemian time itself.” Although Munch’s connection to the bohemian community of artists and writers is well documented for 1884, the bohemian days of his memory can plausibly originate in the sec- ond half of the previous year, when Munch was sharing a stu- dio in Christiania with six other young artists. It was in 1883 that Munch exhibited his paintings publicly for the first time at the Art and Industry Exhibition during the summer and the This woodcut of volcanic activity at Krakatoa appeared in the London Fall Exhibition in December. illustrated paper, The Graphic, on August 11, 1883. Later that month Moreover, Munch almost certainly attended the wildly con- the island blew itself apart in a cataclysmic explosion that sent dust troversial Christiania premiere of Henrik Ibsen’s play Ghosts and gases high into the atmosphere. Courtesy Donald Olson. on October 17, 1883. The play, which contrasted the honest, free life of the bohemian artists to the hypocritical conven- volcanic aerosols spread worldwide in the following months. tionality of Norwegian society, polarized the capital. Eggum A report issued by the Royal Society in London devoted notes that Munch painted a portrait of one of his friends in more than 300 pages to “Unusual Optical Phenomena of the the characteristic pose of the bohemian, Osvald, in the play.

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